KOMPAS.com – About 66 million years ago, a giant asteroid hit ancient America, triggering a mass extinction that killed 75 percent of the dinosaur species.
Most of what is known about this extinction comes from North America, home to popular dinosaurs such as the T-rex and Triceratops.
Paleontologists do not know much about how this terrible disaster occurred in the region that is now transformed into South America.
However, a collection of dinosaur fossils recently discovered in the Patagonia region of southern Argentina can reveal more information about this.
The Canada Tomas site is a window into the final story of dinosaurs
Reporting from National Geographic, Wednesday (25/10/2023), researchers succeeded in finding Canadon Tomas, a fossil site with extraordinary potential that could reveal the moments of extinction of dinosaurs in the South American region.
Paleontologist Matthew Lamanna from the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, United States, said the discovery included the bones of several duck-billed dinosaurs called hadrosaurs.
Not only that, the findings also include carnivorous dinosaur teeth, snake spines, and the jaws of small ancient mammals.
According to him, the discovery shows that Canadon Tomas apparently “preserved” large and small animals from prehistoric ecosystems.
Lamanna said that currently the Canada Tomas area is an arid desert covered in bushes.
However, about 66 million years ago, this part of South America was very warm, wet, and grew many plants including ferns and palms.
Previous research also shows that Canadon Tomas is equipped with a winding river that leads to the sea.
The freshwater environment also allows almost all creatures that die in this area to be buried and remain preserved.
This condition is a rare picture of life in the Cretaceous Period, which was the last days of dinosaurs on the surface of the Earth.
“There are far fewer sites that preserve fossils of land-dwelling vertebrates from the end of the Cretaceous Period in the Southern Hemisphere,” said Lamanna, quoted from Cosmos Magazine, Monday (16/10/2023).
Lamanna continued, the Canada Tomas site helps researchers better understand the period leading up to the extinction of non-avian dinosaurs, which was followed by the expansion of mammals throughout the world.
With fossils of large herbivores, carnivores and smaller mammalian material, the site provides a window into the entire ecosystem that flourished at the end of the age of dinosaurs before the asteroid strike.
Also read: How is Petroleum Formed, Is It Really From Dinosaur Fossils?
Complete a prehistoric puzzle
Wikimedia/Nobu Tamura
Illustration of a hadrosaur, a duck-billed dinosaur discovered at the Cañadón Tomás site, Argentina.
The material remains of small mammal assemblages are important indicators of a fossil site.
The bones of these animals often provide more information about the structure of ecosystems in the past than those of large dinosaurs.
However, because small skeletons are more easily broken down and broken than large, sturdy dinosaur bones, very small fossils are rarely found.
Especially mammalian jaws complete with teeth, will really help paleontologists to measure how ancient human relatives fared over time.
The fossil collection from Canadon Tomas will also prove the paleontologist’s hypothesis about these prehistoric times.
For example, some studies suggest that the number of dinosaur species may have declined in the Northern Hemisphere during the late Cretaceous Period.
This condition allegedly makes this animal more vulnerable to extinction when an asteroid hits Earth.
“It is often assumed that on the southern continents, these patterns mirror those on the northern continents, but is that true?” Lamanna wondered.
This was also questioned by Alexander Vargas, a paleontologist from the University of Chile who was not involved in this new research.
Although all non-avian dinosaurs became extinct after this event, experts still do not know the fate of the species that lived in the Southern Hemisphere.
“It is possible that the distance from the impact site (the asteroid fall) favored the survival of some groups on southern landmasses, such as monotreme mammals and the ancestors of modern marsupials,” Vargas said.
This would help explain why this group of mammals was present in the southern lands today, but almost completely absent in the north.
Excavations and analysis of rare fossils found at Canadon Tomas are still ongoing today.
Field teams plan to return to the site later this year and early 2024.
Each new find also has the potential to provide a global picture of what the end of the Cretaceous Period was like, not long before the devastating impact of the asteroid strike occurred.
“If our team has found fossils of snakes, two or three types of dinosaurs, and mammals just by scratching the surface, who knows what else might be out there?” Lamanna said.
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2023-10-27 12:30:00
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